It is no easy feat to engage young people with abstract material as well as push them to greater depths of understanding. Add in the extra pressures of curriculum expectations and standards and the problem is exacerbated. Projects designed around standards and having multiple entry points clearly offer students the best opportunity to engage with…

The traditional Run the Football Field physics activity--in which students are timed as they move at different speeds on a football field to investigate displacement and velocity--has been updated for the 21st century. Nowadays, GPS-enabled tablets and smartphones replace the stopwatches and yard markers of the past, allowing students to collect…

The activity described here uses the creative natures of visual art and music to enhance students' potential for creativity while increasing their understanding of the science associated with force and motion. Students design, test, and redesign a sailboat vehicle; collect data; make interpretations; and then defend their design. Music is used to…

As part of the "Car Lab Project," students constructed rubber band cars, raced them, and worked through a number of automotive activities. The students engaged in this project certainly had fun, but they also used high-tech gear such as motion sensors and graphing calculators to gather data on the distance and time cars traveled and to generate…